Discrimination complaints can be the bane of your existence. They are time-consuming to defend and can require you to produce mountains of information. Is there anything to be done? Take heart from the actions of some of the employers below, and heed from others. Every employer can take some preventive steps to forestall a complaint or make it right once you receive one.
Foundation Concepts
Federal law protects employees from discrimination in the workplace. The federal law applies to employers with fifteen employees in any twenty-calendar. Are you thinking, “Great, I’m a small company, no need to worry?” Not so fast. Every state in the union, and the District of Columbia, has its own laws governing discrimination, and those cover nearly all employers. Presume the law applies to you, and you can rarely go wrong. Why is it significant if federal law applies? Federal law allows successful employees to recover their attorney fees from the employer. This can often be more money than the employee recovered. You don’t want to pay your own lawyer and the employee’s.
Weight-Bearing Walls
Employees who are treated less favorably because of race, sex, disability, age, national origin or religion receive protection under the law. Encompassed within sex discrimination are pregnancy and sexual harassment. Courts have interpreted the law to protect employees from harassment based on the other protected categories such as race and religion. Many states also protect on the basis of sexual orientation, marital status and tribal affiliation to name just a few.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, last year there were more than 75,000 discrimination claims made in the United States (this excludes state-only filings). While the number was slightly up from 2005 (75,428), it is 5 percent less than the ten-year average (79,482) of filings from 1997 to 2006. As discrimination filings have decreased, the complexity of those cases has increased, which means that each individual case can have more that one type of discrimination charge associated with it. This is more challenging for you, which is why you need an attorney experienced in employment law.
Often, you may think of discrimination in the workplace as referring to sexual or racial discrimination, which seems to get the most press. While these protected categories see the highest number of discrimination filings, neither has seen an increase in charges since 2006 compared with the ten-year average. Discrimination charges for national origin, religion and retaliation have all seen increased filings over the last ten years, and business owners need to understand what this could mean to their business.
Step Up to National Origin Discrimination
A common misconception in discrimination law is that one must be of a different race, sex or age to discriminate against another. Not so. A Korean supervisor expected that Korean workers had to work harder and longer than Caucasian or Latino workers. He reinforced his message by screaming at and hitting Korean workers. When one worker finally complained, the court found that the supervisor had stereotypical ideas of Korean workers that amounted to unlawful harassment based on national origin.
If a Norwegian supervisor makes Ole and Lena jokes, a female manager harshly criticizes only women or a light-skinned African-American supervisor refuses to hire dark-skinned African Americans, a company may still face harassment or discrimination claims. Sharing certain characteristics with a subordinate doesn’t insulate one from discrimination claims. The wrongful conduct is treating an employee differently, or adversely, because of this protected characteristic.
Door to Religion
In an interesting twist, an employee objected to the employer’s religion being foisted upon him and lost his job because he objected. The employer had a new age mission statement that required employees to carry the tenets of the company around on a card and seek training and cleansing for negative energy. The owner believed that employees were punished in this life for bad deeds in a past life. When
